st eye-catching advertisements, shows that there are many
things which our imagination only accepts "against the grain." Fire,
storm, loss by theft or burglary, sickness, disablement and death we
do not, by choice, dwell on these things in thought.

Now some people are inclined to pet this impulse of turning away. "Do
not think dark thoughts," they tell us, "the best insurance is
unconsciousness, insouciance, denial. Misfortune will pass you by if
you do not look for it."

Perhaps there is something to be said for this method when it comes
with absolute spontaneity from the innermost nature. But if for the
radiant apprehension of beauty and health we substitute an effort to
cling to the picture of good when our very bodies and nerves are
warning us with suggestions of evil, we run grave risks. By adopting
someone else's sense of freedom from danger and repressing our own
conviction that for us a certain danger, more or less remote, exists,
we are putting great pressure upon ourselves. At times of ill-health
or accidental worry, a sleepless night may bring us an agonising
succession of imaginative pictures, those very pictures which we have
attempted to banish from our daily life. If we have still greater
power of repression these grim images, forbidden throughout every
moment of waking life, may reappear in dreams.

(Of the still more serious dangers of repression and of its relation
to various forms of insanity, this is hardly the place to speak.[11]
It ought not to be necessary to appeal to alarming instances in order
to make us attend to a suggested warning.)

[11] See Bernard Hart's illuminating treatment of the whole subject in
_The Psychology of Insanity_, Cambridge Manuals of Science.

Now if we decide to regard all fear as a suggestion of precaution, the
emotional part of it to be laid aside as soon as it has fulfilled its
function of arousing interest and directing action, it is easy to see
the psychological justification for insurance.

Of course pecuniary insurance is but one instance of such sequences of
action, though it happens to be a rather obvious one. In a different
field, most of us know the delightful feeling of relief experienced
after consulting a doctor about some symptom that has perhaps been
troubling us for a long time. "May I safely do this? Ought I to
refrain from that?" and such perpetually recurring irritations to the
attention are replaced by the knowledge that it is now the doctor's